A sharp, rainbow-colored tale that’s sure to entertain and teach young readers.
This debut middle-grade fantasy novel finds three children drawn into a magical quest to find other kids who went missing decades ago.
Ten-year-old Chelzy Stone, her parents, and her 12-year-old brother, Matthew, moved to Simonsville, Pennsylvania, a year ago. As summer approaches, she and Matthew are ready to enjoy their vacation from school. Matthew plans to read comics and play video games, and Chelzy hopes to explore the group of trees—or “Magic Woods,” as Grandpa Stone calls them—behind their home on Sycamore Street. One day, she glimpses what looks like a black-cloaked woman in flight near the trees, and it naturally stokes her imagination. She’s also excited to meet her new neighbor, a shy 11-year-old girl named Tory Herold. The new girl introduces the siblings to an old board game called The Lost and Found Game, which her Uncle Tony gave her. Eerily, the game’s cards feature pictures of black dust and a scrap of black cloth, which match real-life objects that Chelzy and Matthew recently found outside. Later, Grandpa Stone tells the kids about three Sycamore Street children who went missing in 1982, supposedly carried off into the woods by black birds. Do Chelzy, Matthew, and Tory dare investigate the Magic Woods themselves? After all, The Lost and Found Game ends with a challenge involving a Dark Queen. Procopio’s debut blends the dazzling splendor of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with structured magic that’s reminiscent of that in the Harry Potter series. It’s the colorful parade of characters that steals the show, however, including the Bright Queen and Melzabod, a blue unicorn who guides the kids through such areas as the Sea of Weeping Willows. Indeed, animal helpers abound, making it tough for “The Trio,” as the third-person narrator calls them, to err too badly. However, the author eventually adds a plot twist that forces Chelzy and company to rely on their own skills. She also adds real-life nature facts, including an explanation of the difference between evergreen and deciduous trees. A warm, thoughtful ending leads toward a sequel.
A sharp, rainbow-colored tale that’s sure to entertain and teach young readers.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9860607-0-0
Page Count: 262
Publisher: RoseLamp Publications
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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